1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to emulsions of wax in water and to their use in cleaning and care preparations.
2. Statement of Related Art
For many applications, waxes are not used in bulk or in solution, but rather in the form of emulsions in water which have various advantages over the other forms, such as ease of application, rapid mixing with other aqueous phases and the absence of inflammable or toxic solvents. Since waxes are generally not self-emulsifying, suitable emulsifiers have to be added as auxiliaries for the preparation of wax emulsions. Through the lack of workable theoretical concepts, these auxiliaries--even today--are still best selected empirically from the broad range of known emulsifiers. In many cases, compounds which have an excellent emulsifying effect on certain waxes are less suitable or unsuitable for other waxes. In many cases, therefore, the choice is still confined to emulsifiers which are not without disadvantages, such as inadequate biodegradability and incompatibility with other desired formulation ingredients, or which have troublesome effects in the practical application of the preparations produced from the emulsions. Thus, both cationic and anionic and nonionic emulsifiers are used today. Among the nonionic emulsifiers, highly ethoxylated fatty alcohols and sorbitan esters containing more than 20 mol ethylene oxide (EO) per molecule are of particular significance despite their poor biodegradability.
On account of the disadvantages attending most of the known emulsifiers suitable for wax, a search is still being conducted for compounds which are more suitable for the production and use of wax emulsions.
It has now been found that wax emulsions having excellent properties for further processing to cleaning and care preparations can be obtained providing certain alkyl glycosides are used as emulsifiers in their production.